Quicksilver

  I was restless. Worse than restless, I was itchy. Frustrated, short-tempered, and increasingly depressed, because I couldn’t find enough to do with my hands. My mother’s new decorating theme was cozy and organic, the opposite of the airy modern look she’d always gone for before, and the more our house looked like a feature in Country Living magazine, the less use she had for even the most practical devices I could build. I’d already automated my entire room from light switch to curtains, and I’d been warned against piling up too much electronics junk in the basement. So right now I was building a couple of laptops from parts I’d got cheap off the Internet, with a vague idea of selling them and making a profit when I was done.

  But I wanted more. I always had, but now I wanted it worse than ever. A chance to build something new and challenging and exciting, something other people could see and use, something that actually mattered. How I could do that without getting noticed by the media was a question I hadn’t resolved yet, but I couldn’t bear to hide my LED under a bushel for much longer. Because six months ago, in a desperate all-or-nothing effort to escape from Mathis, I’d tackled the greatest technological challenge of my life. My synapses had sizzled like white lightning; my body had thrown itself completely into the task; and when I finished the machine and turned it on, the surge of exhilaration was like nothing I’d ever felt before. It was like a dam had burst inside me, and my whole mental landscape had changed.

  Ever since then, I’d been constantly bombarded by ideas, and I couldn’t look at the simplest machine without thinking about how to improve it. As I swiped groceries over the scanner and keyed in produce codes, I was envisioning the technology that would make both those tasks unnecessary. When I watched a news report about a mechanical exoskeleton that could help people with spinal cord injuries, I started brainstorming ways to make the device stronger, lighter, and cheaper. At night I lay awake calculating equations to the last decimal point, designing and testing prototypes in my head until they worked without a hitch.

  But that was where it stopped. Because my workspace was limited, and even if I could afford the parts, the tools I needed were beyond my budget. My urge to create had never been so strong, yet there seemed no way to satisfy it.

  But then I saw an interview in the paper with an artisan who made clocks out of recycled coffee cans, and he mentioned the local makerspace.

  “It’s a place where engineers and woodworkers and artists—basically anybody who likes to make things—can get together and work on shared equipment,” I told Dad that evening, as I got up to pull my dinner out of the microwave. “If I go to a few of their events and Open House nights, I could apply to become a member—ow!”

  I stifled the gasp, but too late. My mother zipped across the kitchen at the speed of light, turning on the cold tap and dragging me over to the sink. “Honey, it’s hot! Be more careful.”

  “Mom, I’m fine.” I pulled free, shaking water from my hands. “It was just a little steam.” I grabbed a potholder and carried the plate to the table, where my dad was looking over the brochure I’d printed out from the makerspace website. “But seriously, it’s perfect. I could make all kinds of stuff there. I could collaborate with other makers, work on bigger projects. And it’s not just for tech geeks either, they’ve got sculptors and musicians and people making jewelry. I wouldn’t even be the only girl.”

  I might have spoken too quickly. I might have been a little flushed. I knew I ought to stay calm so my parents would see I’d thought this through and wasn’t just asking on impulse, but I couldn’t. I wanted it that badly.

  Dad sighed. “Pumpkin,” he said, “it sounds great. But it’s fifty dollars a month. And if they see the things you can do, it’s going to attract attention—”

  “I’m not going to show off,” I interrupted. “I know better than that. I can stick to easier projects when the others are around and do the more complicated parts on my own.”

  “But you’ll be going to university in another year anyway,” Mom pleaded. “Can’t you wait until you’re a little older? Until you’ve taken a few courses, and it won’t look so … unusual?”

  “Girls in engineering are always unusual, Mom.” Which, I realized a millisecond later, was pretty much the worst argument I could have used with her. In desperation I turned to my father. “I can’t stand playing around with old junk in the basement anymore. I can do so much better. I need this, Dad.”

  Dad went quiet, and for a moment I thought I’d won him over. But then he glanced at Mom’s anxious face and shook his head. “I’m going to have to say no, sweetie. It’s not that we don’t trust you, but they’ve got some pretty dangerous equipment in that place. And there are too many things that could go wrong.”

  “Like what?” I asked incredulously. “I’m not stupid, Dad. I’m not going to cut my hand off or blow anything up, and I’m not going to let anybody take pictures of me either. And besides, when I go into engineering, I’m going to be working with all kinds of stuff like this anyway. I know you’re scared of losing me again, but you can’t protect me forever.”

  Mom got up and hurried out. I could hear her blowing her nose in the next room as Dad said heavily, “I know it’s hard, Tori. When I was your age—”

  “Niki, Dad. My name is Niki, remember?” I was furious, but I kept my tone civil. My parents were all I had in the world now, and I couldn’t afford to alienate them. Literally. “And no, you don’t know how hard it is. You have no idea what it’s like to be me.”

  Dad said nothing. I picked up my fork and tried to eat some lasagna, but it tasted like old plastic. I shoved the plate away. “I’m going to be late for work,” I said and left.

  0 0 1 0 1 0

  My phone clanked at me halfway to the bus stop. I pulled it out and read:

  –Sorry, honey. Talk when you get back?

  I knew what that meant: Mom was planning to cancel her night out with Dad so they could wait up for me, sit me down, and explain their decision all over again, in the most loving and guilt-inducing possible way.

  What it didn’t mean was that their decision was going to change. I texted back with the last of my remaining patience:

  –Nothing to talk about. I get it. It’s OK.

  I sent it off, then added another:

  –Working late. Home at 11. Kayleigh’s giving me a ride.

  Which was a total lie, since Kayleigh wasn’t even on my shift tonight. But if Mom thought I’d be gone all evening anyway and that I was in good company, there’d be no point in her staying home.

  Value Foods was quiet, since most people had better things to do on a Friday night than buy groceries. Between customers I swapped out last week’s gossip mags for the new issues, listened to Sarah complain about her ex-boyfriend, and watched Milo stack flats of store-brand soda in the bargain aisle. I was counting the cases and calculating the total volume of liquid in my head when Jon piped up that he’d bought an awesome new stereo for his truck, adding a few seconds later that it was raining like Noah outside. I smiled vaguely at the first comment and nodded at the other, while pretending not to notice the hint.

  At eight thirty I was sitting in the break room leafing through an old issue of Chatelaine when Milo poked his head in the doorway. “Hey,” he said. “You okay?”

  I looked up, surprised. “I’m fine. Why?”

  “Just wondering,” he said. “You seem kind of … off somehow. Uptight.”

  Was it that obvious? I rubbed a hand across my forehead, trying to massage away the tension. Either Milo had some pretty impressive emotional radar, or I wasn’t as good at hiding my feelings as I’d thought.

  “It’s nothing big,” I said. “Just some stuff with my parents. You know how it is.”

  Milo nodded slowly, but he didn’t say anything more. I picked at an uncut corner of the magazine, feeling self-conscious under that steady gaze. But when I looked up again, he’d disappeared.

  I finished my coffee and headed back to my station just in time to keep t
he lineup at Jon’s register from turning ugly. But my customer-greeting smile felt more fake than ever, and my attempts at small talk fell flat. It was a relief when the unexpected crush moved on and the store was quiet again.

  There had to be a way to convince my parents they were wrong about the makerspace being too dangerous. But though I spent the rest of the shift arguing with them in my head, it was no use. I’d already done my best to convince them—it just hadn’t worked. I rang through my last customer, closed down, and stalked off to the office.

  Milo was sweeping the corridor as I came in, dark head bobbing to the rhythm of his music player. He hailed me with a lift of his eyebrows. “Heading out?” he asked, a little too loudly.

  “Yeah,” I said. I pulled my coat off the hook, thrust one arm into the sleeve, and was reaching for the other when my phone vibrated in my pocket.

  Now what? Irritated, I pulled it out and turned it over. There were twenty-three messages.

  It couldn’t be Mom or Dad. They knew I couldn’t answer when I was on shift, and anyway they’d have called the store line if it were that important. It had to be someone drunk-texting the wrong number. I opened the message window, hoping it would at least be funny—and the bottom dropped out of my stomach.

  –20:35:23 RELAY ACTIVATED

  My leg muscles locked, my whole body trembling with the urge to fight or flee. I forced my stiff finger to move, scrolling through one message after another. Activated. Deactivated. Activated again…

  “Whoa,” said Milo, leaning the broom against the wall and pulling his earbuds out. “What’s the matter?”

  I breathed in through my nose, telling myself not to panic. Something was interfering with the relay’s signal, or it wouldn’t be cutting in and out like that. So nothing major had happened yet. My parents were still out of the house, so if I got home fast and dealt with this, there’d be no reason for them to suspect that anything had gone wrong at all.

  There was only one problem. I had no idea why the relay had come online or what it was doing. For all I knew, it might just blow up in my face.

  “What is it?” Milo asked again.

  “It’s nothing,” I replied, stuffing the phone back into my pocket. “But I need to get home. Right away.”

  0 0 1 0 1 1

  “Thanks for this,” I told Jon, climbing into the passenger seat of his rusty 1990 Ford F-150 pickup. Drops speckled the windshield, but the worst of the storm had subsided. “Sorry I didn’t take you up on the offer before.”

  “No problem.” He turned the key, and the truck revved to life. Judging by the growling noise it needed a new water pump, but that was the least of my worries right now. “So what’s the hurry? Sure you can’t stop for a coffee on the way?”

  I was trying to think of a plausible lie when Milo popped up in the headlights, waving both arms above his head. “Hey,” he said breathlessly as Jon rolled the window down. “Can I grab a ride too? I’m just a couple streets over from Niki.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” said Jon, giving me a what-can-you-do glance that I pretended not to notice. Milo climbed in beside me and we started off, splashing through the puddles toward the main road.

  Jon switched on the radio, and some country singer began to wail about the hardworkin’ boy who loved her and the harddrinkin’ man she loved. I hoped he’d change the station, but Jon seemed perfectly happy, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel as we waited for the light to turn. “Which way?” he asked.

  “Ross Street,” I told him. “Off Hilliard, just south of Caledonia.” I kept my tone casual, though my fists were balled and my foot pressed hard against the floor. Getting home fast might be all I cared about, but I didn’t want Jon getting too curious about why.

  “Oh yeah? My grandma lives around there. So how long have you…”

  “Hey, Jon,” interrupted Milo, “that arrow’s not gonna get any greener.”

  Jon’s mouth puckered, but he pressed the accelerator and swung into a left turn. We drove a few blocks before he spoke again. “You don’t have to keep taking the bus unless you want to,” he said. “Most nights I’ve got the truck anyway, so if we’re on shift together, give me a call and I’ll pick you up.”

  “Awesome,” Milo said brightly. “You’re the man.”

  I knew and Jon knew and probably Jon suspected Milo knew that the offer had been meant for me. But Jon could hardly say so without being rude, so he forced a smile. “Nah, not really. Like I said, it’s not a problem.”

  I almost felt sorry, then, about the way I’d blown him off before. But then Jon edged closer, his thigh pressing mine, and my charitable thoughts vanished in a surge of revulsion. I jerked to the right, crushing Milo against the door. But Milo didn’t protest, or even make a sound. He angled his legs until not even a millimeter of our bodies were touching and kept his eyes on the road.

  Jon stiffened, and I knew he’d got the message. I was half afraid he’d stop the truck and tell us both to get out, but he must have decided it wasn’t worth the drama. A sharp turn flung me into Milo again, who let out a barely audible “oof.” Then with a roar we swung onto Ross Street, and I saw the lights of number 28 glowing in the near distance.

  “Right here,” I blurted, and the Ford jerked to a halt. I scrambled over Milo and popped the door open. “Thanks, Jon. Night, Milo. See you—” I jumped down onto the driveway and took off, fumbling for my key as I went.

  The porch was lit, but the front window was dark, and when I wrestled the key into the lock and shouldered the door open, no one answered my call. Only the light above the kitchen sink and the soft murmur of CBC Radio hinted that anyone might be home, but those were just my mom’s usual antiburglar tactics. I sprinted down the corridor to my bedroom and waved on the light.

  At first glance everything seemed normal, from the pile of laundry on my unmade bed to Crackers whining hopefully from his crate in the corner. He didn’t seem upset, just eager to get out, which made me breathe easier. If anything strange had happened in my absence, he’d have been yelping and scratching like crazy.

  “Hang on,” I told him, flinging open my closet door and digging through the heap inside. Two pairs of dress boots, a sweater that had fallen off its hanger, a library book on cybernetics that was six weeks overdue … and shoved into the back corner, a cardboard box marked THIS END UP with an arrow pointing sternly at the floor.

  Was it safe to look inside? Or was I about to make a fatal mistake?

  Yet I couldn’t ignore the danger, and I certainly couldn’t run away and leave my parents to deal with it. There was nobody in the world who could handle this right now, except me.

  Don’t panic, I reminded myself. Then I picked up my old hockey stick, slid it under the bottom corner of the box, and flipped it aside.

  There sat the relay, a silver egg on a nest of multicolored wiring. But no light came through the aperture, and the seam around its perimeter was intact.

  It wasn’t active. In fact, it didn’t look as if it had powered on recently at all.

  I exhaled, my tension draining away. There’d been a lightning storm not that long ago, and the monitoring device was plugged in to my old phone charger. Maybe a power surge had triggered a false alarm? I unplugged the charger and picked up the base, relay and all, for a closer look.

  Sure enough, that was the answer. One of the capacitors had melted—my own fault for not using a surge protector. I was inspecting the scorched circuits to see how much I’d have to replace when Crackers started to whimper pathetically.

  “Oh, all right, you,” I said, setting the relay down on the nightstand and crouching to unlock his crate. He trotted out, tail wagging, and pushed his cold nose into my hand. “I’ll take you outside in a—”

  The lights flickered. The clock radio snapped on, blaring, and the remote-controlled curtains whirred open as the room went into its wake-up routine. I dived for the radio and was smacking it silent when a low hum vibrated the air behind me. “Oh crap,” I breathed and s
pun around—just in time to be blinded by an explosion of white, scintillating light.

  Sparks danced across my retinas as I staggered back, tripped over the laundry basket, and fell, cracking my head against the wall. For three vital seconds I lay there in a daze, and by the time I scrambled to my feet, it was too late.

  It hadn’t been a power surge that pinged my phone after all. Someone had been signaling the relay, trying to send a transmission through—and now that unwanted packet of information had finally arrived. All six foot three, 185 pounds of him, stretched across my bedroom carpet with his back arched in agony and the roots of his dyed brown hair glinting like gunmetal in the light. For an instant, his body glowed and flickered, and I could see the nightstand through it. Then he solidified and collapsed with a thud onto the floor.

  Crackers yelped and scuttled behind me. But I stood riveted, staring at the new arrival. His dark grey uniform shirt was wrinkled and half untucked, one shoulder ripped at the seam as though he’d been fighting. His eyes were closed, and his lips were pulled back from his teeth in a grimace. But he didn’t move, and he didn’t appear to be breathing. Misgiving flashed inside me, and I was stooping to check his pulse when he stirred, groaned, and slowly opened his eyes.

  The look on his face when he saw me was extraordinary—but the dismay turned quickly to resignation. “Tori,” he murmured, struggling up onto his elbows. “Your hair’s different. How long…?”

  Even in my half-stupefied state, I knew what he was asking. “Since I saw you last? About six months.”

  His brow creased in dismay. “Six … no. Is that all, really?”

  Some people might have been charmed by the absentminded professor routine, but I had no patience with it. “You just scared the crap out of me, Faraday!” I snapped. “If you were planning to come after Alison all along, you could at least have let one of us know!”